Susan Elia MacNeal

Susan Elia MacNeal's new novel is The King’s Justice.

From her Q&A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: This is your ninth novel about Maggie Hope--how did you come up for the idea for The King's Justice?

A: You know, Maggie Hope’s been through so much both physically and emotionally, especially in the last two books, The Paris Spy and The Prisoner in the Castle. I really wanted to show the cumulative effect of all of that trauma, as well as just living through the war.

I sometimes describe Maggie as “Nancy Drew meets James Bond” but I really do want to show how her character’s been evolving. She’s a very different woman...[read on]

Visit Susan Elia MacNeal's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Prisoner in the Castle.

Writers Read: Susan Elia MacNeal (August 2018).

--Marshal Zeringue

Janice Kaplan

Janice Kaplan is the author of The Genius of Women: From Overlooked to Changing the World.

From her Q&A with Rebekah Denn for the Christian Science Monitor:

Q: How do you define genius?

How we define a genius changes over time and in how a story gets told. I interviewed one professor at Cambridge who described genius as where extraordinary ability meets celebrity – celebrity in the sense of being recognized and having your work noticed. Over the centuries, women have had the extraordinary talent over and over again, but their work has not been noticed or recognized. I tell the story of the amazing Lise Meitner, who discovered nuclear fission in the 1930s. It was a huge breakthrough and it won the Nobel Prize. I said “it” won the Nobel Prize, because Lise Meitner did not win the Nobel Prize; her lab partner, Otto Hahn, did.

Q: Is the situation improving?

I tell the story of two women who were key in the CRISPR study [a groundbreaking gene-editing technique]. They have won some big awards, but...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Jeffrey Colvin

Jeffrey Colvin's new novel is Africaville.

From his Q&A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: How did you come up with the idea for Africaville, and for the family you write about?

A: The stories that became Africaville began in the late 1990s as a series of short stories set in rural Alabama. The stories were set in communities along the route from Selma to Montgomery taken by protesters during the 1965 march for voters’ rights.

Many people are familiar with the leaders of the marches such as Martin Luther King, but I was interested in the lives of the residents in the rural communities along the route. How had the communities been formed? Had any of the residents marched? If so why? If they did not march, why not?

I have a personal connection to such communities since my grandmother raised a raised a family in rural Alabama community. During the early 1980s I came home on a leave from the Marine Corps to find that my grandmother had moved away from her former community and that the last houses in the community had been torn down.

The short stories I wrote were inspired by stories my grandmother and her former neighbors told about their community.

These stories became part of a larger narrative in 2001 after I read an article in The New York Times about a community called Africville that once existed on the northern edge of Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Africville was formed in the late 1700s and existed until the late 1960s when over the objection of residents, the city of Halifax forced residents out of their homes and razed the houses, churches and other structures in the community.

I was...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Ismée Williams

Ismée Williams's new YA novel is This Train Is Being Held.

From her Q&A with The Nerd Daily:

In the author’s note, you shared a quick story about the inspiration behind This Train is Being Held. But can you tell us about which aspect of the book that you started with when you first wrote it?

I’ve been taking the subway for over twenty years, so I’ve had a lot of rides where I saw cool interactions between strangers. A balding man passing a packet of tissues to a young woman who got on with a mascara-streaked face and begins crying into her hands. A mom removing an apple, a juice box, and a box of animal crackers from her toddler’s stroller to give to a homeless vet. Three teens with nose rings and black leather jackets holding open the door for a grandma with a walker struggling on the stairs who’s shouting out to please hold the train because she’s late to her doctor’s appointment. When you see connections like this happen, it’s quite heart-warming. It makes you feel good about people in general and living in New York specifically. For THIS TRAIN IS BEING HELD, I started with that idea, the connection between strangers. I wanted to put two very different young people together in the same subway car–a couple you wouldn’t expect to cross paths–and watch them fall for each other. I’m a sucker for romance, especially ill-fated romance, so then I had to create background stories and scenarios that tortured Alex and Isa and forced them apart: demanding schedules, demanding parents, mega misunderstandings, families detonating due to the stress of job loss and mental illness. That is never easy to do to your characters, because as an author, you often end up loving them. At least I do! But it’s necessary to...[read on]

Visit Ismée Williams's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Ismée Amiel Williams & Rowan.

My Book, The Movie: Water in May.

My Book, The Movie: This Train Is Being Held.

Writers Read: Ismée Williams.

The Page 69 Test: This Train Is Being Held.

--Marshal Zeringue

Anita Abriel

Anita Abriel's new historical novel The Light After the War, based on her mother's life. Abriel has written many novels under the name Anita Hughes.

From her Q&A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: How much did you know about your mother's life story as you grew up, and at what point did you decide to write this novel based on her history?

A: My mother told me a lot of stories when I was a child but I didn't always pay attention. It was when I was 12 that she told me something (which is in the book, but I won't give it away) that stuck with me. I've wanted to write it ever since.

I decided to write the novel a few years ago. It felt like the right time in my life to approach it and do it justice.

Q: How much research did you need to do to write the book, and did you learn anything that especially surprised you?

A: I did a lot of historical research. One thing I learned was how many Hungarian Jews - half a million - were killed in the Holocaust, even though Hungary came so late into the war.

Also, the fact that Jews ended up spread all over the world - South America, Australia, Canada - was surprising. Many didn't want to...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Neil J. Young

Neil J. Young is the author of We Gather Together: The Religious Right and the Problem of Interfaith Politics.

From his Q&A at the OUP Blog:

You begin your book in the 1950s. Why?

Most accounts of the Religious Right begin in the 1970s because they tend to treat the movement as a response to the social transformations of the 1960s and to a series of Supreme Court decisions about school prayer and abortion. This view, however, paints religious conservatives as reactors rather than actors, as people who are responding to political and social changes rather than as shapers of many of those changes. It also depicts the Religious Right as only a political story. By starting in the 1950s, however, I show the theological and intellectual origins of the Religious Right. In other words, I argue that the Religious Right was an outgrowth of the interfaith conversations Catholics, evangelicals, and Mormons were having at midcentury over questions about the unity of Christians, the authority of the Bible, the means of salvation, and who could claim the mantle of true Christianity. It was these religious conversations that were a response to the ecumenical movement of mainline Protestantism, I argue, that helped give rise to the Religious Right. I show that long before Roe v. Wade and the Equal Rights Amendment, religious conservatives had already been drawn together in conversation and alliance building. So, the Religious Right wasn’t a new political development for these religious conservatives but rather...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Margarita Montimore

Margarita Montimore's new novel is Oona Out of Order.

From her Q&A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: The novel has been compared to The Time Traveler's Wife and Life After Life. What do you think of those comparisons?

A: I haven’t read Life After Life, but it’s been on my TBR for ages and I’ve heard it’s excellent.

As for The Time Traveler’s Wife, that’s one of my favorite books, so I’m flattered by any comparisons to it.

That book is also a big reason I resisted writing Oona at first, because Audrey Niffenegger’s novel is perfection: the prose is gorgeous, and the love story it tells feels both epic and intimate. But then I realized Oona’s story would be different, beginning with her love life being far messier.

Also, I wanted use time travel to explore other relationships she’d have—romantic, familial, and platonic—as well as larger themes like...[read on]

Visit Margarita Montimore's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Cho Nam-Joo

Cho Nam-Joo is the author of Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982: A Novel.

From her Guardian Q&A with Holly Williams:

What was the #MeToo movement like in South Korea?

In May 2016, a woman was murdered at Gangnam station, and in October that year there were a lot of sexual harassment scandals in various areas of society, including literary circles and the arts. People started to speak about the horrors and threats women have felt – which had not been discussed earlier. Then a female prosecutor, Seo Ji-hyeon, participated in the #MeToo movement, revealing what she had experienced [during an interview on Korean television, Seo discussed her experience of being sexually harassed at work, a revelation that prompted other women to come forward].

Do you see things changing – or do young women face the same problems today?

There is still sexual abuse and discrimination. Recently in the news, there was an applicant who couldn’t get a job because the public officials gave her a lower score just because she was female. But there has been some change. Women have been protesting and petitioning; they have begun to gather in solidarity. Recently, it was ruled that abortion being a crime was unconstitutional. Although change is slow, I...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Robert Harms

Robert Harms is Henry J. Heinz Professor of History and African Studies at Yale University. His new book is Land of Tears: The Exploration and Exploitation of Equatorial Africa.

From Harm's Q&A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: You've spent many years working on the history of this area. What inspired you to write this particular book?

A: There are two reasons – one personal and one professional.

The personal reason was that this book allowed me to integrate and consolidate research I have conducted over the years in equatorial Africa.

In 1969-71, I worked as a teacher in a secondary school in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (a.k.a. Congo-Kinshasa). The school was located among the Lega people in Manyema province, and I was fascinated to learn about the secret Bwami Society and the works of abstract art produced by the Lega.

While there, I collected over 1,000 Lega proverbs outlining the philosophy of the Bwami Society, and I was even able to attend a Bwami initiation ceremony. From reading history, I knew that Manyema was also the heart of Tippu Tip’s ivory and slaving empire in the late 19th century.

During my subsequent graduate studies in African History at the University of Wisconsin, I wrote my Masters’ thesis on the ABIR rubber company in the Congo, using a collection of original documents that the university had recently obtained.

Later, I did Ph.D. dissertation research along the upper Congo River, looking into the Bobangi ivory trade in the 19th century. I spent two and a half years traveling up and down the river in a dugout canoe powered by a 6 hp motor and collecting oral histories in the riverside villages.

Land of Tears allowed me to integrate the history of Manyema with the histories of the ivory trade along the upper Congo River and the depredations of the rubber companies in order to tell the larger story of the exploration and exploitation of the Congo River basin.

The professional reason was my dissatisfaction with...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

W. J. Rorabaugh

W. J. Rorabaugh is Dio Richardson Professor of History at the University of Washington. He is the author of six books, including The Alcoholic Republic, American Hippies and Prohibition: A Concise History.

From his Q&A at the OUP Blog:

Q: What was Prohibition, and when did it take place?

A: During the 1920s the Eighteenth Amendment to the US Constitution banned the production and sale of alcohol in the United States.

Q: How long did Prohibition last?

A: Prohibition lasted only thirteen years. The Twenty-First Amendment repealed Prohibition in December 1933.

Q: If the United States had long been a hard-drinking country, how did the dry minority achieve Prohibition?

A: The dry forces had superior political organizations. The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) had been campaigning for a dry country since 1874, and in 1895 it was joined by the Anti-Saloon League (ASL). The nation’s first single-issue political action group, the ASL spent lavishly to elect dry legislators and members of Congress. Whenever they had a majority in a state legislature, they moved to dry out that state. In 1913 they started lobbying for a dry amendment to the US Constitution.

Q: How did the Republicans and Democrats respond to the ASL’s demands?

A: Both parties were terrified of the ASL, which moved aggressively to defeat any candidate that did not agree to its demands. The ASL spent lavishly on campaigns, provided its candidates with speech writers and advertising, and organized an army of dry volunteers through evangelical churches.

Q: How did wet candidates confront these tactics?

A: Many wet candidates took money from the German-American Alliance, an official group founded in 1900 by the German government to foster better German-American relations and promote...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue